PREVIOUSLY, THE NEW YORK KNICKS...The Knicks beat the Yao-less Houston Rockets 104-98 Monday night for their fourth straight home victory. The Hawks won the only previous meeting between the two teams this season, 98-95 in Atlanta on December 5th. I'm surprised the opportunity to suggest a nickname for the bench hasn't gained more steam. Can't say I have a useful suggestion myself, though.

Consider this an open thread for all the pre-game, in-game, and post-game (but pre-recap) thoughts.

well, i was talking about this the other day on my blog and that's that we are awful from the free throw line - tonight is especially bad, but we've been bad all season. Missed another technical tonight and I can only say that lack of focus, concentration, and possibly fatigue (when you play too many minutes - the legs are the first to go).

I will say that I will continue to blame Mike Woodson for the reason he takes those shots. It's clear he needs help in understanding that he's not a jump shooter and the best help I can think of is - benching him every time he shoots a jumper with over 5 seconds on the shot clock.

I blame Woodson some, but at some point Smith needs to realize that his game is around the rim, not at the perimeter. I'm sure that the coaches (unless they are completely incompetent) have told him many times not to shoot that shot except in dire circumstances, but during the game it's up to him to make that adjustment.

The trouble with Al being out though is that you can't really bench Smith for any period of time to hammer that point home. Zaza is already overworked (and overmatched) as a starting 5, and there really isn't any other even decent big man after that on the bench. When Zaza and Smith go out, that leaves Solo and Morris to hold down the fort: not exactly a great combination for a playoff contender to have playing major minutes...

Josh is not going to stop taking jumps shots so you all need to start working on getting over that and last night he actually hit a few. That's how it is and that's how its' going to be. He's going to take them and occasionally he's going to make them. Josh and his missed jumpers are not the problem right now. The problem is our starting back court. Plain and simple. They are in a slump unfortunately at the same time. That's the biggest problem. Let's not give Joe and Mike a pass on their abysmal play. It's easy to point to Josh and his missed jumpers on most nights, but let's point to some of the missed jumpers by our two starting guards. Between them there are plenty.

I give Joe a pass because he leads the league in minutes per game (at 40 MPG), and has to spend most of that time in isolations on offense or chasing the opposing team's best guard/wing around the court on defense. While I do wish that he would go to the rim more, I can certainly understand how he would get tired having to put forth all of that work night after night.

Mike Bibby, though, is next to useless if he is not hitting his shots. I can't blame him for that either though - that's what he is, and the coaching staff/management should have known that when they traded for him. I would like to see at least a little more effort from him defensively though. I'm sure he will regress back to the mean over time, but I think his true value is somewhere between the bomber we saw earlier in the season and the clunker that we have now...

Joe does not deserve a pass for dribbling the air out of the ball and not trusting his teammates. yeah he's playing 40 minutes and he should be tired, but a lot of the time he works way too hard for shots and its unnecessary. If 3 people are on him that means someone is open. He has to try to find that person late in games instead of doing what he's done the past 4 years (out of necessity). The players around him have gotten better so there's no need for him to try to do it all alone. Missed shots I can live with, but Joe going 1 on4 still at this point I cannot. In his defense, the players have to quit just deferring to him. They are very much too content to stand around and watch him dribble late in games.